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Karl Struss

Vita

Vita

96 year old Karl Struss has achieved fame both as motion picture camera man and as a still photographer. Yet in this fast moving world the youthful photo-sessionist has been forgotten and only the cinematographer remained. The history of photography is pregnant with discoveries of new images by long forgotten artists and hitherto unknown amateurs. This is especially true of the hundreds of enthusiasts pioneering color photography when in 1907 the first practical method – the autochrome color plate of Auguste and Louis Lumière – came on the market.

Invented in 1904, but only manufactured after the introduction of panchromatic emulsion, the autochrome plate had its heyday until the beginning of World War I. Manufactured at the Lumière factory at Lyon, France, a plate was exposed through the glass side, i.e.

through the thousands of color grains embedded in potato starch and acting as color filters. After development the plate was re-exposed to light and re-developed (reversal process), resulting in a transparancy composed of thousand of tiny specks of primary colors, as in a pointillistic painting. However, the pleasure of seeing a picture in color was fraught with certain enconveniences: the exposure time was about forty times longer than with black and white material, and the transparencies were rather dense, due to the starch grain screen.

Few autochrome pictures were ever published on account of the costly production of four or six color letter print. It is only in the last few years that the work of a few creative artists has been made available to a small circle of admirers, either in print, or - as in the present limited edition set – by way of original color prints.

Karl Struss’ images are completely imbued with the novel experience of shooting color, and the charm of a bygone age. Meticulous care has been taken over the printing in order to retain in the dye transfer prints the full color range oft he original transparencies. The fine pictures which this pioneer of color photography captured seventy years ago delight our nostalgic time and will be appreciated by connoisseurs of classic photography.